


The Unfortunate Nature of Human Hearts

by anslin



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, GitF, Not A Happy Ending, Oneshot, sorry this is kind of really sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-21 00:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4807298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anslin/pseuds/anslin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn’t matter, she tells herself, he will come back, he always comes back, but the mirror is broken and the shards lie at her feet and the blood falls from her hand, and she thinks it a sad representation of her hopes.</p><p>In which the Doctor doesn't come back through the mirror, and Rose struggles to move on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unfortunate Nature of Human Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so be gentle, cause this was my first fic, but I got some positive feedback so I thought I'd share it.  
> It's a REALLY angsty onset, so be forewarned.  
> Any comments/reviews would be greatly appreciated!

She stares at the blood on her hand, and watches it surface, pooling in the cup of her palm before overflowing through her spread fingers, washing them crimson. It’s with a morbid fascination that she hears the small patter as each drop hits the ground before her feet.

 _This is the numbness,_ Something inside of her says, _the pain will come later._

She wonders what comes after, but dares not ask. She doesn’t know if there is an after, she thinks maybe the pain lasts forever. His did, but maybe the problem lies with his hearts. Humans, after all, are made to heal once they get hurt, and gods, well, they aren’t meant to get hurt at all.

It doesn’t matter, she tells herself, he will come back, he always comes back, but the mirror is broken and the shards lie at her feet and the blood falls from her hand, and she thinks it a sad representation of her hopes.

There is a boy she once loved, maybe years ago, maybe weeks, all she knows is it’s a past, but that night she seeks comfort in him the way a woman seeks comfort in a man. She thinks it must be the most simple thing in the world, an instinct born millennia ago for survival, except she’s in a box that’s bigger on the inside and the hands that comfort her just don’t feel right anymore.

She doesn’t blame him, doesn’t tell him. It’s not his fault, it’s not he who has changed, and she hates herself in the morning that she turned one false hope into two, and never asks it of him again. She can see in his eyes that he understands, and she loves him for that, but it’s not the kind of love he’s looking for.

Her days are spent standing in front of shattered glass, and her nights pass in the places he lived the most, where she can imagine he is still there, if she doesn’t turn around. She takes to wearing his coat atop her thinning, bending shoulders, and thinks she must make quite a picture, blonde hair, brown eyes, pale skin, fractured, reflected in a million glaring pieces. Weeks pass, but it feels like years since she’s been whole.

Finally a brown hand takes her own and leads her from her vigil. He’s done shouting now, and she realizes that she can’t remember what he was saying in the first place. She looks up at him questioningly, but the light in her eyes grew stagnant long ago, and he only smiles at her sadly before allowing the doors to close behind them.

When the wheezing and groaning fades and she has stopped screaming, he carries her shaking form home and locks the blue box behind him. He knows he should, but he can’t bear to take away the key around her neck when he’s already taken away her last hopes at seeing the man who gave it to her.

Sleeping in her childhood bed, her mother sitting next to her, she dreams that a man with starlight in his soul takes her hand. He smiles at her like he would give her the moon on a whim, but her hair reaches down her back and she is dressed in the elegant gown of a king’s courtesan, and when she looks back there is a broken girl dead in their wake.

It makes her think at the wickedness of the world, that one girl’s dream is another’s nightmare, and she wonders at who’s expense had come her own.

She covers all the mirrors in her room the next day, and sits in the middle of her bed clutching his coat like a lifeline. Tomorrow, she thinks, she will face the world again, but for now it is all she can do to keep her tears silent.

 _Have a fantastic life,_ A voice says, _do it for me,_ but when she turns around there is no one there, and the emptiness inside of her has never been more keen.

She doesn’t know who she’s living for, but she lives anyway, and slowly life returns to her, but it fits all wrong, like she’s a ghost, something from the past forced into the present. One day, as she walks around the city, she thinks that this is her Aberdeen, and she hugs herself tighter, and pretends it’s him hugging her instead.

The police box sits in a corner on the sidewalk, and she finds that he was right, no even gives it a second glance. Cast away, forgotten, and that makes two of them. She can’t bring herself to go inside, but she leans against it often, late at night, and looks up the sky wishing she was looking down instead. She did, once.

It’s the law of gravity, plain and simple. Whatever goes up must come down.

Maybe she’s always known that, she just never knew it would hurtthis much. She doesn’t tell anyone, but she’s building a gravestone in her heart, and it has her name on it.

Eventually, she moves forward in small, shuffling steps. She does her A-levels, and studies the stars because she’s never felt more cramped than on this small blue planet. She works at a shop, and moves into a small apartment of her own, and when she graduates and gets a proper job, she knows she should be happy, content at least, but she isn’t.

Instead, she feels she’s never been farther from the universe than now, watching it from afar, trying to pull it down with her, write all it’s wonders down in neat lettering.

In her closet there is a man’s tattered coat, and by now it’s been washed enough times that it doesn’t smell like him anymore but she still feel closest to alright when she holds it at night.

On the weekends she visits an old blue box instead of her friends, because she has no friends to visit. She sits, and she remembers, but it’s been awhile since she’s cried. Her heart is cold now.

A cold heart turns brittle though, cracks easier, and when her mother finally gives in to illness she finds herself breaking all over again. She moves back into her childhood home, and tries so very hard to pack all her aches and pains away in boxes along with all her mother’s old things.

It doesn’t work, of course, and she should have known, after all, she’d seen him try to do it a thousand time.

The boy marries, moves away until he’s little more than a memory printed on old pictures. She lets herself fall behind, her steps slow and faltering, always faltering.

She’s heard that time heals all wounds, and she thinks they couldn’t have been more wrong. Time, she’s learned, is measured in heartbreak.

When the box disappears, she resigns herself to the pain. She’d thought it would take centuries to give up fighting, had thought herself strong, and maybe it did. Life, she’s learned, is bigger on the inside, and there are more monsters here than men, more men than monsters maybe, she can’t tell the difference anymore.

Her hair is silver and her skin sags on her bones as she pulls a threadbare coat out of her bedroom closet and tucks a handwritten note inside it’s pocket. _For when I’m gone,_ She thinks, _in case he comes back._

Funny how she gave up so long ago, but could never truly let go.

When he appears at the door, he’s hardly changed at all. He still has that same kinetic energy coursing through him, that same sad look in his eyes, muted, but always there. He isn’t wearing his coat.

“I’m looking for Rose Tyler?” His voice is the same, exactly as she remembers it, but the look he gives her holds not a gleam of recognition, and she realizes it’s hardly been any time at all, for him, since he’s last seen her.

Her hand clenches so hard on the door handle it turns white, and she wants nothing more to cry and fall into his arms, as though she were twenty years old all over again. She nearly does, but then she remembers the liver spots on her skin, how she trembles from the effort of standing.

A memory of long ago, the sorrow, the fear written plainly across his features as he talks of her growing old.

 _You withered,_ The bitterness whispers, _and you will die._

She knows at that moment that she’s already fallen, and she could never bear taking him down with her.

Her heart is melting, fast and furious, inside of her, and she knows that soon all that will be left is ashes, so she smiles sadly and tries to keep her lip from trembling.

“I’m sorry, there hasn’t been a Rose Tyler here for years.”

If he had known to listen, he might’ve heard her sobs through the plain white door, but, in the end, he was all too good at running away.


End file.
